For testing electronic devices, in particular integrated electronic circuits like memory devices (particularly DRAMs) providing digital electrical output signals, a test or stimulus signal is fed to an input of the device under test, and a response signal of the device under test is evaluated by an automatic test equipment, for example by comparison with expected data. Such an automatic test equipment may have included a particular test functionality, that is to say test functions or routines which the test equipment may carry out. This test functionality may be incorporated in the test equipment in the form of executable software code.
As a result of a test of a memory device like a DRAM array, a pass/fail information is assigned to each memory cell being tested indicating whether the individual memory cell has passed the test successfully or not. Storing and rapidly managing a huge amount of such test result data is a demanding challenge for a test equipment and a test result data processing unit.